Joel Santo DomingoApple Power Mac G5 Dual (2.7GHz)We recommend the Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz for power-hungry photo, music, and video artists who need expansion space and the horsepower to get the job done. The Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz represents the pinnacle of Mac computing.

No external speakers in package. Highest-end graphics card required for 30-inch display support. Pricey with all the options. No dual-drive RAID at this price.

Bottom Line

We recommend the Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz for power-hungry photo, music, and video artists who need expansion space and the horsepower to get the job done. The Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz represents the pinnacle of Mac computing.

The Power Mac G5 Dual has been, and is still, the one system that graphics artists dream of when they take their catnaps between editing sessions. The latest Power Mac, the G5 Dual 2.7GHz ($3,648 direct, without monitor), represents the pinnacle of Mac computing. Artists, Art Directors and well-heeled Mac-heads will wheedle, beg, and plead with their managers, parents, or spouses to attain this top-of-the-line Mac.

The PowerMac G5 uses the same state-of-the-art cooling solution, a combination of liquid cooling and smart fans, that debuted in September 2004 on the Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5GHz. The new 2.7-GHz dual-CPU version is, thankfully, just as quiet. Though the CPU speed improvement is a relatively minor one, it's an appreciated one. Perhaps a more significant improvement is the inclusion of a speedy 16X dual-layer, dual-format (DVD+/-RW) DVD writer. The previous Power Mac, now discontinued, had only a single-layer, single-format (DVD-RW) DVD writer. The 8.5GB capacity of dual-layer (DL) DVD+R discs is enough of a reason to upgrade systems if your data files tend to be large, as they often do in video work. Other improvements include newer graphics cards: The new ATI Radeon 9650 comes standard. But for a serious graphics haul, we upgraded to the high-end nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL (a $450 upgrade, included in price as tested). All these hardware improvements, along with Mac OS X 10.4.1 Tiger and iLife '05, help high-end graphics users get their work done quickly with a minimum of fuss.

To complement the system, Apple sent in its widescreen 30-inch Cinema display ($2,999 direct), which dwarfs all except the biggest HDTV plasma displays. Its 2,560-by-1,600-pixel native resolution is orders of magnitude higher than your average 17-inch (1,280 by 1,024) or even 20-inch (1,600 by 1,200) LCD display. This allows users to display most of a 5-megapixel (2,560 by 1,920) image at 100% resolution. Less zooming in can help keep the whole picture in perspective when you're doing a retouching job. When we first reviewed the 30-inch Cinema display, we noted a few caveats for people with meticulous needs, and those still hold true, but otherwise it is a gorgeous monitor. The 30-inch display requires either an ATI Radeon 9650 (standard on the Dual 2.7GHz) or the tested nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL upgrade card. Lesser Power Macs, from 1.8 GHz to Dual 2.3 GHz, will require an upgraded graphics card to use it.

We compared the Power Mac's performance to two recent whiteboxes, one powered with the dual-core Intel Pentium EE 840, the other with the dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ running the 32-bit version of Microsoft Windows XP Professional. Though both outperformed the PowerMac on the two PhotoShop filter tests we ran, they only won by 1-2 seconds--barely noticeable in the real world.

The whitebox systems, however, trounced the Power Mac on Doom 3 tests. We surmise that there is still some optimizing to do for the Mac version of Doom 3. That said, the game is playable at the 1,024-by-768 resolution. At 1,600 by 1,200 with Doom 3's high-quality setting, however, the game was not playable on the Power Mac and was barely playable on the two whiteboxes. The Power Mac was able to flex its muscles on the Cinebench 2003 test, where it beat both Windows whiteboxes. The Cinebench test shows that the Power Mac has some heavy-duty graphics-rendering horsepower, and that the dual 2.7-GHz CPUs can help you get your job done quicker with applications written to take advantage of the second processor. The Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7GHz ranks among the best of the best at graphics workloads.
As with previous Power Macs, we recommend the Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz for power-hungry photo, music, and video artists who need expansion space and the horsepower to get the job done. Though many high-end Mac users will be satisfied with an iMac G5, the Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz represents the pinnacle of Mac computing.

To see how the Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz compares to its Mac brethren in terms of features, check out the Apple comparison guide we've put together.

Too see how the Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz stacks up against similarly targeted system we put it in a comparative table with the Dell XPS Gen 5, Velocity Micro ProMagix PCX, and Dell Dimension 8400.

Apple Power Mac G5 Dual (2.7GHz)

excellent

Bottom Line: We recommend the Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz for power-hungry photo, music, and video artists who need expansion space and the horsepower to get the job done. The Power Mac Dual 2.7GHz represents the pinnacle of Mac computing.

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About the Author

Joel Santo Domingo joined PC Magazine in 2000, after 7 years of IT work for companies large and small. His background includes managing mobile, desktop and network infrastructure on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Joel is proof that you can escape the retail grind: he wore a yellow polo shirt early in his tech career. Along the way Joel e... See Full Bio

Apple Power Mac G5 Dual (2.7GHz...

Apple Power Mac G5 Dual (2.7GHz)

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